Last update - 00:00 10/03/2008
Family threatens to blow up home if Amidar evicts them
By Ruth Sinai, Haaretz Correspondent
A woman in her sixth month of pregnancy, along with her two toddlers, is threatening to blow up their public housing apartment in Petah Tikva if the Housing and Construction Ministry carries through with its plan to evict the family this morning.
"My husband will hole up here with a gas canister," said Natalie Hananya. She said she had not yet decided whether she and the children would be in the house at the time.
The Housing and Construction Ministry and the Amidar Public Housing Authority said Hananya is illegally occupying the apartment, even though she and her neighbors say she has been living in the apartment since she was 8 years old.
Amidar director general Yaakov Brosh said he does not have the authority to prevent the eviction because there is no evidence that Hananya is eligible to stay in the apartment.
The Housing Ministry said it was unprepared to comment at this time.
"If Amidar kicks me out of my home, I have nowhere to go," said Hananya. "I have no family."
Hananya's grandparents moved to the apartment 40 years ago and lived there with their five children, including Hananya's father and aunt, who continued living there after their parents died.
Hananya's father stayed in the apartment after he got married; he lived apart from his wife, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Hananya started attending a boarding school when she was 8, spending weekends and vacations at the apartment with her father and aunt, who served as a mother figure.
When Hananya was 16, she left the boarding school and moved into the apartment, where she has lived ever since.
Her father died when she was 22 and her aunt entered a nursing care institution in 2003, after her health deteriorated due to a fall on the apartment's crooked tiles, which Hananya subsequently fixed.
Hananya has recently asked the social justice organization Yedid for help, and the association asked Housing and Construction Minister Ze'ev Boim and Welfare and Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog last week to prevent the eviction.
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